Wait! Before you scroll past and mutter some abuse in my direction about this being another Fortnite: Battle Royale article let me assure that this is mostly about graphs and numbers… OK… I see it now, that’s not much better either….

I’d be lying if I said I had been playing any less Fortnite: Battle Royale (F:BR maybe?) in the past few weeks. Sure there has been the odd interlude, but I keep coming back to this free to play gem from Epic Games (and if you havn’t heard about why I prefer this to to that other 100-players-in-one-player-out-fest PUBG, then check out the piece I wrote a little while ago) and it’s catchy brand of cartoonish style mixed with slick gameplay. In the past few days they’ve rolled out a pretty excellent bug fixing update (keeping in mind we’re still in that seemingly perpetual early access) that has dramatically improved network performance and also added a temporary new 50 vs. 50 gamemode which has ramped up the action giving even feeble players (like myself) a chance at some solid combat experience.

There is one thing that keeps jumping in to my mind every time I drop out back to the lobby and almost immediately manage to join another game; Player Numbers, they’ve been the downfall of many promising online multiplayer experiences. I’m sure this is an experience shared by many; your favourite online game with ghostly servers… or worse, stacks of full servers but not enough people persistently looking to play to fill another one. The interesting thing about F:BR (or PUBG for that matter) is that there always seems to be enough players to fill a 100 player game, so how does that work? I guess it would be easy to shrug your shoulders and say “Meh, probably just popular games“, but I’ve got a habit of overthinking things so I decided to investigate a bit further and answer a question:

Fun Thing to Remember: This article was written early December 2017 and is based on the state of the game at that point… also Hello ‘future people’! How are those hover cars working out for you?

I find Raccoon City a comforting place, which might say something about me as a person given how zombie infested it is on a typical day, but I largely square it away to being due to the huge influence that Resident Evil 2 has on my tastes as a gamer. I’ve written before about how much I miss the level of detail conveyed in the visual presentation of those early PS1 era survival horror games, but that’s just one part of their unique blend of obtuse puzzles, cheesy take on Romeroesque horror, bizarre locations, and skewed take on reality that I enjoy. It’s unsurprising that my interest was therefore piqued when I first heard about “Prototype Mansion” from indie team “Jupiter Lighthouse“. Described by the developers as a “Love Letter” to those early 90’s survival horror games, ‘Prototype Mansion’ currently exists as the first episode of a title clearly heavily influenced by and parodying that era. Continue reading “Prototype Mansion: This Game Contains Scenes of Explicit Parody”

It’s been quite the twelve months for my humble little blog; although I’ve been in existence for a little over two years, 2017 has shown a new level of consistency hitting my goal of at least one post a week (usually Wednesday or Thursday… mark it in your diary everyone) pretty much without fail. I’ve even managed to top that up with the odd “Bonus” article and all important community event, and whilst on the subject, “Community” has been the word of the year. Hundstrasse has proudly, if not very successfully, been a regular fixture in the excellent “Question of the Month” event which is enthusiastically organised by Later Levels and has grown to be a platform for a varied spectrum of gaming bloggers to come together in order to tackle some of our past-time’s most hotly debated conundrums. Continue reading “Editorial: December 2017 – A New Regular Thing”

*Question of the Month is that first mince pie of the season served up by Later Levels December’s ‘Question of the Month’ seems to have taken a festive turn looking to the jolly gentleman clad in red and asking “Is he really pulling his weight? Couldn’t someone else… say from the world of gaming do a much better job?“. Tough as it is on the … Continue reading QotM*: Which Video Game Character Would do a Better Job Than Santa?

I don’t know if this post is going to … “work”… as a concept, but I’ve been back-and-forth on how I can best capture my recent gaming habits.

Since writing about ‘Fortnite: Battle Royale‘ a few weeks ago, it has become my “go-to” game for those idle evenings where I just want to switch off and play something fun… but ultimately low-effort. There’s a kind of rhythm to each round that’s easy to fall in to and, as I mentioned in my previous ramble, I’m at least competent (if not particularly good) so the whole thing is vastly more enjoyable that PU:BG. A little while ago I even managed to win a solo round; albeit mostly due to fortunate arena shrinking and sneaky-sneaky tactics, but nevertheless it was a victory where I was the last one standing of those initial one-hundred players culminating in a dramatic ambush of the penultimate player.

Spoiler Warning: In this post I discuss the plot, including the ending, of Zelda: Breath of the Wild…the clue is in the title…

As my first real outing into the Kingdom of Hyrule, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed BotW and feel at least slightly more qualified now to engage in a Zelda themed conversation than I did just a few short months ago. It’s a game that excels at providing challenge and the thrill of adventure, however you want to tackle it, all wrapped up in a well crafted and intricate world. One of the reasons I havn’t undertaken a review style piece (other than shying away from that type of article in general) has been that it would likely deteriorate into a meaningless stream of me using all my favourite words, like “intricate” and “crafted”, without adding much to the volume of work that’s already out there discussing what a solid experience it pulls together to be. Continue reading “Zelda – Breath of the Wild: In Defence of the Story”

Apparently first released back in 1994, NBA Jam T.E. (For Sega Mega Drive) holds the illustrious honour of being possibly the only ‘team sports’ game that I’ve ever really enjoyed. As I’ve often mentioned, one of the great things about gaming is the breadth of the medium, so whilst it’s not my preferred “Heftgröße” (as our German speaking cousins would say) I know that there are gamers out there who revel in ‘Fifa’ and ‘Madden’ as much as I do in ‘Bioshock’ and BotW. Continue reading “Weird Retro Mumblings: Oh My! NBA Jam T.E.”